Have baby, will travel

Posts Tagged ‘Calpol’

I’m perched on a stool in the Barbakan, Chorlton’s Polish bakery-cum-deli, tucking into teacakes and strong black coffee. Jo and I are talking about all sorts: weddings, babies, childminders, sleepless nights, a two year-old who wraps herself around her sleeping mother’s neck at 2am every morning, galleries in Berlin, Peter Saville and plans for a Will Alsop-inspired art project. Milo, meanwhile, has wrestled himself out of his giant blue bumper suit (you know, those big padded all-in-ones babies wear when it’s cold out), has had enough of being jigged up and down and is getting a bit grizzly.

‘Right, time to go,’ I say, jumping down off the stool and manhandling Milo back into both suit and pushchair.

Milo, rather obligingly, chooses this point to express his rage at a) being a bit tired and b) being in his pram and apparently not going anywhere. As he opens his mouth wider to let out a cry to make the whole of South Manchester tremble, Jo and I peer in, two dental explorers on the verge of a new discovery. And there, shining palely just under the gum, is what looks suspiciously like Milo’s First Tooth.

‘Oh god,’ I sigh, ‘and there was me thinking he was just being a little sod last night.’

It’s a strange moment: pride that my little lad is turning into a robust, independent chap; trepidation at the fact that I will have to start weaning him within the month; relief that I’ll be able to jack in breastfeeding and not have the child welded to my boobs at all hours of the day and night; and a sense of understanding. It’s hard to be rational at 4am, harder still to think that your baby isn’t just waking you up because they’re being bloody-minded (and, given his mother, if Milo turns out to be the most stubborn, bloody-minded babe in all of Mancunia I wouldn’t be surprised).

‘You’ve got Calpol, haven’t you?’ asks Jo.

It’s at that point Milo and I decide to pay a visit to the chemists. Calpol, here we come.